"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the
animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel
nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest
lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
Samuel Adams, (1722-1803)

Monday, January 14, 2013

RNC Chair: Rig The Next Presidential Election For Republicans

A little over a year ago, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) proposed rigging the presidential election for Mitt Romney
by allocating electoral votes based upon which candidate carried each
individual congressional district, rather than upon who wins the state
as a whole. Thanks in large part to Republican gerrymandering, if
Corbett’s election-rigging plan had been in effect last November in the
Republican-controlled states of Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
Virginia and Wisconsin, Romney would have won the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote by nearly four points.In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel,
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus did not simply
endorse this election-rigging scheme, he indicated that it should be targeted towards consistently Democratic states where it is most likely to skew the presidential election to the GOP’s benefit:

Republicans are in a unique position to make headway with
such a plan nationally because Wisconsin and other key states that have
gone to the Democratic presidential candidate in recent elections are
currently controlled by Republicans at the state level. The change would
give Republicans a chance to claim some of those states’ electoral
votes.“I think it’s something that a lot of states that have been
consistently blue that are fully controlled red ought to be looking at,”
Priebus said of the plan to change how electoral votes are granted.Such a system “gives more local control” to the states, he argued.

This would not be the GOP’s only effort to rig elections so that they
win no matter what the will of the American people may be. Last
November, Democratic House candidates won the national popular vote by
nearly 1.4 million votes. Yet, thanks to Republican gerrymandering, they
would need to win the popular vote by over seven points in order to take back the House.